This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this naked mind podcast where without judgment,

pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture.

Hi friends, this is Annie Grace with this naked mind and I'm here today answering readers questions

and today I have a question from Ellen and Ellen this question is this. She says, I have terrible

GI issues and pain and I've suffered with it for 30 years. I've been struggling to quit drinking wine.

The two steaks want to help me get through the evenings when the pain was particularly bad or when I was really anxious about things and that they might be getting really bad.

However the truth is I also drink wine because I liked it. Now I feel that I'm having a nervous breakdown because the wine isn't there anymore to lean on.

I know it was bad medicine but I'm to the point where the pain and my anxiety around the pain is so bad that I'm afraid to put anything in my mouth

and I feel like my quality of life is gone. If you have any words, thoughts or insights you might like to share, I would be grateful.

Don't be afraid to be honest, you won't hurt my feelings and please note I'm not asking for medical advice. I get lots of that.

Well Ellen, I think this is a tough one because I think that drinking for so many of us, whether it's physical pain or emotional pain or even not pain,

but just the edge of life, the stress, the underlying current that something isn't quite right, the lack of ease and feeling comfortable on our own skin, the social anxiety, whatever it is, drinking numbs these feelings.

And it does this by making your brain function slower. It encourages neurotransmitters, gov and glutamate in your brain.

And both of those, the function of alcohol and those specific neurotransmitters is to make your thoughts, you know, they don't connect as fast.

You don't feel your senses as quickly, you don't feel your sense of balance as much.

And so by definition, you think less and you think more slowly and you feel less pain.

And it is very similar, I'd say, to any pain killer that is abandoned and stops the bleeding so to speak but doesn't actually address the issue.

And I know you didn't ask me for medical advice, which is great because I don't have any medical advice when it comes to stomach problems and stomach issues.

But I would say that not fixing the problem, no matter what it is, is at the crux of this.

And so I'm sure you've gone through everything and you've tried everything and you're sitting here watching this and say, well, you know, I've been 30 years, I have tried to fix this problem and it's been to no avail.

And so I have been self-medicating with drinking for this pain. And I think that the thing about using alcohol specifically to self-medicate instead of other things that you might look into and might try and might speak to your doctor about is that alcohol creates addiction.

And it does this because our bodies become tolerant to it and because we need more and more of it to achieve the same effect, you said that when you had slipped, you've actually gone 106 days, it says in your question.

...